


La Syrene (The Mermaid)

by MercuryGray



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Age of Sail, Boats and Ships, F/M, Mermaids, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sexual Fantasy, Sorry Not Sorry, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:54:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5822338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sailors will tell all manner of tales about mermaids and sirens, gorgeous women with tails who will drag a man down to his death. Caleb Brewster, lonely in the North Atlantic on a whaleship, has little time for such things -- especially when he's other dreams to catch his fancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Syrene (The Mermaid)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [truth_universally_acknowledged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/truth_universally_acknowledged/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Once More To Part From You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752218) by [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray). 



> A small (more mature!) expansion of the world being developed in Once More to Part From You, stemming from a lot of exposure in a short time to a large body of nautical art featuring mermaids, thoughts on Caleb as a the sailor and the same, a couple of photosets on tumblr musing on the theme of Caleb with tattoos, and a spare evening at home.
> 
> NSFW, PWP, and shameless, shameless, shameless.
> 
> For truth_universally_acknowledged, who asked nicely and waited patiently and said all the right things afterwards.

Caleb did not even turn his head when the hands at the bow called out that they’d seen a mermaid, watching the green hands run past him in wild anticipation. Poor lads -- they’d be sore disappointed when they saw what was at hand. Boys on shore heard all sorts of wild tales about sea-sirens, gorgeously beautiful women who were part fish and all trouble, ready to sing a man to his death in the depths of the ocean, drag them down to watery graves. He’d had the trick played on him, too, on his first voyage, rushing to the rail to see only the drab, lumpy shapes of what some would call sailor’s wives and others mermaids and the more scientifically minded the sea-cow. And indeed, it was a sea-cow -- an ugly, homey creature, with wide lips and a hairy chin. Hardly the substance of a thousand wasted hours and countless figureheads. Only a desperate man would think of making love to that.

 

But, as they say, _when a man has been at sea long enough..._

 

Caleb had shipped on a vessel called the Mermaid once. Her figurehead was carved as boys will dream, a full figured woman with beautifully creamy breasts, tipped rose with loving precision and long, blonde ropes of hair, keeping her somewhat clad above while below, a trim waist nipped into a tail where a woman’s parts should be, her scales painted gossamer green. A beautiful piece of work (and lifelike enough that there was more than one tale aboard of some seaman or another slinging a rope to lower himself down to kiss those rosy lips, fondle those breasts and hope for memories of softer stuff at home.) 

 

Caleb, to his credit, had never done this. He was never so desperate as that, nor so short in his imagination that he required substance to made his dreams alive. And besides, he’d a maid fair enough to dream about without the image of the figurehead, whose breasts were just as perfect and whose hair (though dark) was just as wild and beautiful when she let slip her cap and pins.

 

Oh, Merry. Seven months and he’d be home, and all that wonderful softness would be his again, those clever hands of hers quick and nimble in all the places he required -- and his hands slow and torturous in all the places that would make her sing. (She did make the most delightful little noises when they were alone. In her father’s barn, or his uncle’s orchard, or in the thicket by the beach overlooking the sound. They had quite a list of hiding spots, away from prying eyes. But when the beloved’s father did not permit one to call and play at parlor niceties, one found ways around it.)

 

Caleb eyed the hands at the railing, the young men scowling at the gray lumps in the water below and their odd, bellowing calls, and smiled to himself, coiling the line in his hand and making it fast against its spike. They’d be calling the change of the watch soon, the moon a slip of a thing on the horizon, and he’d be free to take his ease in his hammock, or return to the company of his mess-mates and the slow, arduous task he’d set himself of carving and decorating a busk for Merry, the long, thin length (this one would be whale ivory) that kept her stays aligned. Time enough for that before the hands were called for mess, and time enough afterwards for fond thoughts of home.

 

There is little privacy aboard a ship. Even on a great man-o-war, the triple deckers of Lord Howe and the Royal Navy or one of the great, ponderous hulks of the East India convoys, the decks are crammed fore and aft with men and boys and all the things to keep this little world afloat. A man has no secrets from his shipmates unless he’s canny with them -- and Caleb was canny with his thoughts of Merry. Not for him the half-mute, fisting moans in his hammock, where everyone could hear, or the more desperate dalliances in darker corners. (Is not all flesh warm in the dark?) No, he’d rather take himself on deck when the wind was pleasant, and the sea air soft, and slip inside the solitary confines of one of the whaleboats with his blanket and his thoughts, and take his pleasure there, where there was none to mark it.

 

It had been a long day -- he’d been more tired than he thought, asleep too soon after his head had touched the pillow of his arms. But dreaming, now -- dreams were as good a coin as man could wish for, or hope to spend.

 

He was at home, on Stony Brook Point, rowing out to the oyster beds, the breeze brisk on his face. A sunny day -- none of your overcast North Atlantic here -- and there was no sound save the call of gulls on the water.

 

No sound, that is, until he heard the splash. Turning, he saw a flash of tail, but nothing else -- until his eyes came back around to his side of the boat and caught sight of the intruder -- a woman, clinging, curious, to the gunwhale, eyes deep and lustrous, grinning like a cat. 

 

Caleb in his dreams allowed himself a smile -- he’d played this dream out many times before. How charming she looked as a mermaid, his Merry, all dark curls and laughing eyes, dripping with seawater, her neck hung round about with ropes of pearls and scarves of seaweed draped like silk. Naked as nature made her, the water stroked below by a fine tail, patterned over in scales like blue Damascus steel. A princess of the sea--an empress, even! And all his for the taking. He leaned over, and her lips met his, damp and tasting of salt. First one, teasing and short, and then another, and another longer still. Oh, he could live on those kisses! The boat ducked in the water, nearly swamped as she hooked her hands around  the collar of his waistcoat and tried to pull him down, and he let her slip back into the water, still smiling as she swam away. A taster of her touch, a mere morsel.  

 

This was the game he played in his dreams, the siren and the sailor, temptor and tempted. Sometimes he let her pull him down, and sometimes let her go. It mattered little -- he let the dream go as it would. Sometimes his mind had undiscovered depths, went places even he knew little of. He picked his oars back up and rowed for shore, jumping out and dragging the boat in along the beach. He built a fire, brought in his gear, and laid his dunnage bag beside the fire, laying out to nap. 

 

How strange it is, to sleep while sleeping -- he woke and there she was, the mermaid Merry, still damp from the sea, her tail curved dark and sinuous over one of his legs, her hand stroking his hip in long and aimless patterns. She smiled to see him wake, and then she was kissing him again, his pulse pounding in his ears like the crush of waves on a seashore, blood roaring like the tide in his ears. Her hands were hard against his hair, and he bound her to him in his own embrace, revealing in the soft roundness of her breasts, pressed tight against him, her ropes of pearls and seaweed gone without a trace. His hands scrabbled over her back, her shoulders and the long length of spine, and finally that rump, scaled silver, that fit so nicely in his hands, and cupped her close to him.

 

Sailor’s lore held that a mermaid had two tails, if she was the kind that sailors liked to dream about, the kind with a woman’s parts who would pleasure a man at the mere thought. But Merry’s tail was a singular appendage, the scales that covered it sliding slowly down her back and sides until they formed one unified whole, and as it slid along his legs (much like the way that Merry’s legs had often slid along his own, teasing him in ways their owner did not intend) he felt himself grow harder -- a fact she did not fail to note, drawing her lips back from his own to gaze down at him with a dark and heated smile, propping herself above him and looking down on him with the same gaze a predator looks on something she means to devour.

 

Then she was moving, her tail uncoiling like a snake, her head descending until just at the level of his hips, and those salt-sweetened lips were kissing his length slowly, delicately, one by one in torturous sequence from the root to the tip, until  he was hard as oak and fit to burst. (This, now, was the dreaming part of the dream, for he’d had such service from York City whores but never from his Merry.) Her tongue lapped at him, like a cat at cream, in slow, terrible circles until he’d let himself go, finally, and spilt himself with a cry upon his stomach and the tendrils of her hair. She looked up at him, silent and amused, streaks like spittle around her mouth, as if to ask him in her wordless way if he’d enjoyed it.

 

He did, somehow, and yet -- it pleased him more to please Merry, to watch her bend and writhe beneath his hand, his lips, to force her for the span of half an hour to think only of herself, her pleasure. (To see her face relaxed, her brow at rest, those shoulders that were so tight trying to hold up half the world for once at ease. To see his little selfless girl be selfish.) He flipped the mermaid on her back and set his lips to work along her jaw, her neck, the vale of her breasts and the little aureoles, tinged blue like her skin, tightening and straightening as his lips worked, her hands tight again in his hair, his body brushing against hers in rhythm just as surely as if she’d been as other women were, made to fit him as Merry was. She bristled at the touch of his beard, but pressed him closer, her touch begging for more in silent adoration.

 

And then like that he was awake again, struggling against his blanket in the dark, alone, the bell sounding the watch having brought him back to the land of the living. His smallclothes were wet with cum (no surprise there) and his shirt was soaked with sweat, despite the nighttime chill. He shivered and sighed. The worst part of the dream was that it ended -- at least when he was home with Merry there was the consolation of sleeping afterwards, wrapped around her like a cloak, ready to ward off any harm. He wiped himself down with a rag he’d brought up for the purpose, cleaning the worst of his seed from his clothes, and wrapped himself back up again in his blanket. There was another watch yet before they’d need him -- he could sleep a while more.

 

Seven months of lonely sailing -- seven months of hard work, and barrel staves, and smoking oil, and sweat that ran like rain down your back and brow. But after that, to sail into port with your ship so heavy in the water the wavecaps were practically at the scuppers -- and watch the sailing master count your pay out on the table, and  feel it heavy in your purse! A man could sustain himself on all those things -- and memories of dark-haired sirens besides.

 

His pay heavy in his pocket, Caleb paused on the wharf, considering the sign beside the nearest alehouse -- a tapping head and needle, crossed like the tools of the trade they were. A tattooist’s shop. 

 

Other men would spend their idle hours aboard under the unskilled needles of their friends, tracing chains and ships and birds in lampblack into thier skin. But a sudden wave, a squall, an unsteady hand, and the design was done. No, not for him the shipboard tapskins. He’d get his marks at home, on steady ground. A design like teeth along the high muscle of his arm, done after his first voyage by a friend of the harpooner he’d shipped with, a South Sea islander long in the trade. A scroll with ‘Homeward’ inked along the other arm. Other men would set their sweethearts’ names into their skin, but Caleb didn’t want that -- it seemed...sacrilegious, somehow, to take her name like that, like a brand. 

 

But this would be different.

 

The tattooist considered the drawing on the scrap of paper, sketched and resketched again by Caleb in his quiet hours until he was quite pleased with the design. Inside his pack, the same design played free and loose across the white surface of the busk, playful and pert -- a nice reminder for her, while he was away, of what she was to him, a secret only they would share. 

 

The artist made a silent gesture ‘Where?’ and Caleb pointed to the skin above his heart. The tradesman considered, surveyed the skin, and shrugged, sharpening his razor and shaving Caleb’s chest bare, then laying him back and sketching the design out with a steady hand. 

 

Then a dram of whiskey, and the tattooist went to work.

 

The skin was still smarting three days later, after the long ride home on a farmer’s wagon back to Setauket. She’d met him in their secret place down by the bay, anxious and fretful, as she always was when he came home, and startled, a little, when she laid her hand on his breast and he gasped in pain. “Caleb...what…”

 

He smiled, weakly, and took off his cap and coat, laying them aside to undo the buttons of his waistcoat and draw his shirt over his head so she could see the newest of his designs -- a mermaid, coy and charming, peeking out from underneath a mess of her hair. “D’you...like it?” He asked, watching her face as her fingers delicately surveyed the image, the skin around it still red and healing. “Drew it meself.”

 

“She’s ...beautiful,” Merry said, her eyes alight.

 

“She’s you,” he said, and Merry looked at him in alarm. “Well, not...strictly speaking, of course, but like you. And I’ve something else for you, too,” he said, rummaging in his haversack and drawing forth the busk, wrapping in coarse linen to protect the image. She unwrapped it and gasped in pleasure, her fingers caressing the careful design, filled in with ink, with reverent hands. The mermaid was here, too, stretched out along the surface where the tattoo had curled, two sisters from the same stamp. “So you’ll remember that you’re my mermaid,” he said, her hand joining hers in tracing the image. “And I’ll remember who I'm coming home to.”

 

She quickly laid aside the busk and let her lips lay into his for that. 

 

What use had he for mermaids now, when he had such a girl as this?


End file.
